Malaysia–Pakistan Linkages: Searching for New Diversified Regional Contacts

Abstract

Authoritarianism and a dominant state have characterized the response of the state towards opposition discourses in Malaysia and Pakistan. Both countries are interlinked on various levels and experience growing private sector activities which bring both regions even closer together. Between these two poles grassroots and opposition networks have emerged that often define themselves through Islam. While political dissidence has little chance of being heard, weakened institutional frameworks of the state have given way to transnational networks. Not so much a reflection of supra-national al-Qaeda activities, they are rather a result of political and social dissatisfaction which is home-grown. Meanwhile there are signs that civil society and the prospering private sector could provide niches in which new ‘alliances' between the two regions emerge that to a certain degree function independently of the state. By strengthening the growing middle classes, this could release some of the pressure of discontent that increases dramatically in both countries.

Key Words:

• Pakistan
• Malaysia
• relations
• networks
• Islam

Notes

1. See among many other examples: Gunaratna, Rohan (2002) Inside al-Qaeda, Global Networks of Terror (London: Hurst); Gunaratna, Rohan (Ed.) (2004) The Changing Face of Terrorism (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press); Abuza, Zachary (2003) Militant Islam in Southeast Asia, Crucible of Terror (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner).

2. Milner, Anthony C. (1982) Kerajaan, Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press).

3. Mandaville, Peter (2003) When meaning travels, in Peter Mandaville and Andrew Williams (Eds), Meaning and International Relations (London: Routledge).

4. Means, Gordon P. (1991) Malaysian Politics. The Second Generation (Singapore: Oxford University Press), pp. 2–4; Jomo, K. S. (1988) A Question of Class: Capital, the State and Uneven Development in Malaya (New York: Monthly Review Press), pp. 244–247.

5. Jalal, Ayesha (1995) Conjuring Pakistan: history as official imaging, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 27(1), pp. 73–89.

6. Kukreja, Veena (2003) Contemporary Pakistan, Political Processes, Conflicts and Crises (New Delhi: Sage Publications), pp. 3–11.

7. Nasr, S. V. R. (1992) Pakistan: Islamic state, ethnic polity, Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, 16(2), pp. 81–90.

8. Means, Malaysian Politics, pp. 20–22.

9. See among others: Stark, Jan (1999) Kebangkitan Islam, islamische Entwicklungsprozesse in Malaysia[Kebangkitan Islam, Islamic Development Processes in Malaysia] (Hamburg: Abera).

10. Yusuf al-Qaradawi is close to the Egyptian Brotherhood. He is considered as one of the foremost Sunni scholars today, even though his writings remain highly controversial. One of these reflects the narrow definition of the ‘sanctioned’ and the ‘forbidden’ in Islam and has been used by UMNO and PAS in their concept for an Islamic state in Malaysia. Al-Qaradawi, Yusuf (1985) The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust).

11. Brownlee, Jason (2007) Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 32.

12. Kukreja, Contemporary Pakistan, pp. 168–175.

13. Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza (2001) Islamic Leviathan, Islam and the Making of State Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 130–157.

14. Mandaville and Williams, Meaning and International Relations.

15. Mandaville, Peter (2001) Transnational Muslim Politics, Reimagining the Ummah (London: Routledge); Mandaville and Williams, Meaning and International Relations; Yeoh, Brenda S. A., Charney, Michael W. and Tong, Chee Kiong (2003) Approaching Transnationalism: Studies on Transnational Societies, Multicultural Contacts and Imaginings of Home (Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers). Applying the transnational network theory in Indonesia is: Laffan, Michael (2003) Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia (London: Routledge).

16. Srinivasan, T. N. (Ed.) (2002) Trade, Finance and Investment in South Asia (New Delhi: Social Sciences Press), pp. 78–81.

17. Ganguly, Sumit (2002) Conflict Unending, India-Pakistan Tensions since 1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 114–129.

18. ASEAN External Relations (2005) ASEAN 2004–2005 Annual Report (Bangkok: ASEAN Secretariat), p. 72.

19. Stubbs, Richard (2002) ASEAN Plus Three, emerging East Asian regionalism? Asian Survey, 42(3), pp. 440–455.

20. Dawn (2006) Call for enhancing ties with Malaysia, 5 November.

21. Brownlee makes the point that authoritarianism is rising in Malaysia and Egypt. Brownlee, Jason (2007) Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 122–156. Others conclude that Islamic militancy is a response to Western interference and dominance (Iraq War, Afghanistan); see Jones, Branwen Gruffydd (Ed.) Decolonizing International Relations (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield).

22. Yahya, Faizal (2004) Pakistan, SAARC and ASEAN relations, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 26(2), pp. 346–375, p. 361.

23.

• Table

24. Esfandiari, Golnaz (2004) World: D-8 summit in Tehran seeks to bolster members' economic ties, Radio Free Europe, 18 February.

25. Laidi, Zaki (2003) The delocalisation of meaning, in Mandaville and Williams, Meaning and International Relations, pp. 38–50.

26. Asia Times (2004) US tied over nuclear kingpin, 10 December.

27. CNN World News (2004) Paper trail shows Malaysia ties, February 18; CBS News (2004) Libya, Iran on nuke customer list, 20 February.

28. Mandaville, When meaning travels.

29. Smith, David A. (2005) Neoliberal globalisation and resistance: a retrospective look at the East Asian crisis, in Richard P. Appelbaum and William I. Robinson (Eds), Critical Globalisation Studies (New York: Routledge), pp. 293–301, citation p. 297.

30. Milne, R. S. and Mauzy, Diane K. (1999) Malaysian Politics under Mahathir (London: Routledge), pp. 80–90.

31. Abuza, Zachary (2007) Political Islam and Violence in Indonesia (Abingdon: Routledge), p. 75. Abuza links students groups to “terrorists”.

32. Chand, Anupama V. (2003) Malaysia hopes for big increase in students from Mideast, Khaleej Times, 11 April.

33. Tohid, Owais (2003) Pakistan widens terror dragnet, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 September.

34. Agence France Presse (2003) Malaysia defends detention without trial of Muslim militants, 9 September.

35. Chooi and Company, Solicitors, Press Statement, 3 January 2004.

36. Political coercion thus gets a new meaning as militarized globalization marks the end of the “Westphalian system” according to Mittelman, James H. (2005) What is a critical globalisation studies? in Richard P. Appelbaum and William I. Robinson (Eds), Critical Globalisation Studies, pp. 19–29, citation p. 28.

37. For a rather superficial account of PAS' linkages with the Deobandi school, see: Noor, Farish A. (2003) The localization of Islamic discourse in the Tafsir of Tuan Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat, Murshidul Am of PAS, in Virginia Hooker and Norani Othman (Eds), Malaysia: Islam, Society and Politics, Essays in Honour of Clive S. Kessler (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), pp. 195–235.

38. The Economist (2007) Pakistan's militant shift: Taliban all over, 14 April.

39. Saudis step into Pakistan's quagmire, Asia Times, 13 November 2008. The Saudi Arabian government has as much to worry about al-Qaeda as the West, but it is more tolerant of the student militias and the Taliban, and it has always remained on talking terms with al-Qaeda, which has enabled it to resolve the problem of militancy within the Kingdom, which threatened to overthrow the monarchy only three years ago.

40. On Malaysia's rapproachment with Russia and Central Asia, see: Stark, Jan (2006) “Snow Leopard” meets “Asian Tiger”: shaping Malaysia's relations with Central Asia, The Round Table, The Commonwealth Journal of International Relations, 95(385), pp. 457–473.

41. The quarrels within the ruling government in Pakistan and the party feuds within Malaysia's UMNO, where the son-in-law of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi is pitted against the son of former Prime Minister Mahathir, are evidence enough that both countries remain in a state of transition, where multiple concepts of governance, many of them Islamic in nature, call for attention. As an example, see: Agence France Press (2008) Party feud grips Malaysian politics, 16 November.

42. Malaysia backwater, Malaysia a ‘‘half past six country''—Mahathir, New Straits Times, 26 May 2006.